Discera lands timing chip partner; VC funding

PORTLAND, Ore.  Microelectromechanical systems oscillator maker Discera Inc. has announced a new strategic partnership with timing chip supplier Abracon Corp. Separately, Discera (San Jose, Calif.) also announced that it has landed a third round of financing of $17.5 million, bringing its total venture capital funding to $38 million.

"We are currently ramping up manufacturing toward our goal of 1 million parts per month, so we will use our third-round funding to increase our production capabilities, as well as to build our sales, marketing and operations teams," said vice president of marketing Venkat Bahl.

The third round was led by Scale Venture Partners (Foster City, Calif.), which backs companies ranging from to chip makers to medical suppliers to Web 2.0 companies. Previous rounds of venture funding were led by 3i (London), Partech International (San Francisco, Calif.) and Ardesta LLC (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

Discera's new partnership with Abracon (Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.), an industrial oscillator supplier, adds to a similar deal it has with Vectron International (Hudson, N.H.), a high-performance oscillator supplier. With Abracon on board, Discera now has two U.S. sources of distribution for its MEMS oscillator chips.

Like Vectron, Abracon will re-label Discera's MEMS oscillator chips with its own logo and sell them as pin-for-pin replacements for quartz crystal oscillator chips. In addition to its current customers, Abracon also aims to sell the chips through distributors like Digi-Key Corp.

"Now we have partners in all segments of the $1 billion oscillator market, except the multifrequency market," said Bahl. "Watch for our announcement of a partnership in the multifrequency market later this year."

Discera's overseas distributors for parts under its own brand name include European distributor Azzurri Technology, Korean distributor MJL Technology, Asian distributor Excelpoint, and Japanese distributors TecStar and M-RF.